e. I could see that Jim was aboard and that
the team had cut loose down hill, for his bones were fairly rattling
with the vibrations from the bog hollows, "thank yer, mums," old stumps
and disagreeable boulders. He needed help. He couldn't hang on much
longer.

"Say, Ben, there was a little matter I wanted to speak to you about,"
said Jim, with the same uneasy manner in which he had rubbed all our
household arrangements the wrong way and aroused the resentment of the
frying-pan and its "pards" of the domestic range.

I at once began to talk about something I was reading, to let him down
easy and to open him up wider, for I was anxious to burrow into the
mystery and dig exploration shafts in all directions. As he seemed to
close again, I allowed my comment to drool off into a hum, and then
looked up short in a way to send his ideas from mark-time to a
continuance of the procession.

"You know that young lady, Miss Tescheron--Miss Gabrielle Tescheron?"
asked Jim, tossing his hair into windrows and looking straight away from
me.

"Why, I know that lovely girl I've seen you with; is her name--"

"Yes, that's her name, and we're to be married."

"Jim, old boy, let me congratulate you." And we shook hands over this
creature who was to wreck our happy home--still, I felt there wouldn't
be enough crockery to continue on unless the thing was settled in church
or at Sing Sing pretty soon.

"When is it to come off?" I continued, that question usually being No. 2
to the hand-shake and congratulations.

"Ben, I mention this matter because I feel that I need your friendship
now more than ever," said he, disregarding my inquiry in a way which
clearly showed that Cupid had stubbed a toe. "I am up against it. Tell
me, what should be done? You must know a lot about such matters, and I
don't seem to understand. It's the old man, her pa; a little
whipper-snapper of a dude. I could swat him with my little finger and
settle him in a minute. George! I've a mind to, at that."

"That, of course, is out of the question," I advised, tackling the
matter as if time and again the fat of my theories had been tried out
into the dripping of wedded affinities. "Soft dealing with parents is
essential." This wisdom came also as if I were quoting from a book by a
Mormon, who had handled every variety of father-in-law. "On what does pa
base his opposition?"

"Well, I'll tell you," said Jim, preparing to confess all and let me do
the penance. "B